Of course after not being used for 18 months my carving gouges, though having been wiped with oil and wrapped in canvas, were spotted with rust. So I spent most of the afternoon with vinegar soaks, Barkeeper’s Friend, and a Scotch-Brite pad before finally getting down to actually sharpening them. Nothing that is not regularly used can safely be stored in that garage through a North Carolina summer. I know this. And yet somehow I keep hoping.

I think now I’m ready actually to do some old-style carving next week, and hopefully cough up a box or two this month. But there’s nothing like an afternoon of tool maintenance to remind me how much I appreciate that chip carving only requires a single knife.

This is hard to photograph—you need to see detail and scale at the same time—but here it is anyhow. “Go Forth, My Heart,” 2025, basswood and poplar, 17”x20”. The window frame is hand-joined with a 19th-century plane.

I enjoyed designing the polyptych… gotta make more windows!

Painted window frame with four chip carved panels depicting a view of trees, flowers, birds

Is it a salad if it has only one ingredient?

Visions of a vegetarian diner

For lunch I made, basically, hash, with leftover boiled potatoes, an onion and a block of tempeh. Like much of what I cook for myself these days it was seasoned liberally with home-blend seasoned salt and a large quantity of chopped scallions, and because it looked like it wanted shredded hoop cheese and sour cream, I gave it some. Good stuff. Digging in I had a vision of a vegetarian diner, which would have the same sort of no-nonsense attitude, simple food and bottomless cups of black coffee one ought to be able to expect from a diner, but which would not serve meat.

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The subject line for today’s email from The Dispatch, referring to Signalgate, is a quote: “They are lucky that no one was killed as a result of this.” Funny, I thought the point of the thing was killing people. Given the context, that is the single dumbest thing I have read or heard in a solid month. But a good reminder why I no longer give The Dispatch money.

Five birds on a branch, 8”x12”.

chip carving of five small birds on a branch, in various postures

My dog, looking uncharacteristically glum

Sometimes both sides are right. Plastic straws are an environmental menace. Paper straws are useless and stupid. Solution: Drink like a grown-up.

Watching a junco make jerky little head bobs: do larger animals actually make smoother motions, or do we see their small jerky ones in contrast to their scale, as part of broader wholes, and perceive them as graceful — or miss them entirely? Now I’m sitting here trying to find a deep awareness of the way my hand moves toward my coffee mug, which raises another potentially interesting question about the line between meditativeness and stupidity.

Abba Anthony said, ‘A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”’

–Sayings of the Desert Fathers